The announcement by Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, that he has abandoned a ground-breaking scheme stopping oil operations in the Amazon has led to a wave of protests across the country and speculation about why it failed.
Critics both within and without China have suggested that Xi Jinping’s promotion of self-criticism by Communist Party cadres has at least two motives: it promotes the appearance of concern with lax discipline while avoiding deeper reform, and it softens up potential targets of Xi’s behind-the-scenes campaign to consolidate his power. I suspect the critics are right on both scores. But are there other reasons one might promote self-criticism?
This article is adapted, with updates, from the September 20 article “China’s New Free Trade Zone: Silver Bullet or Stopgap Measure?“
“Before, if anything happened, any accident or disaster, the information can be withheld or contaminated by government media control; but now it’s impossible, almost, to withhold information,” Chao said at the Stanford University China 2.0 conference this October 2013.
President Obama’s decision to shorten, then ultimately cancel, a trip to Asia this weekend may be good news for his Chinese counterpart, who is striving to charm a region unnerved by China’s aggressive stance over territory.
A blistering fictionalized tale straight out of China, “A Touch of Sin” is at once monumental and human scale. A story of lives rocked by violence, it has the urgency of a screaming headline but one inscribed with emotional weight and a belief in individual rights.
The fledgling financing arrangement between Warner Bros. and RatPac Entertainment, a partnership between filmmaker Brett Ratner and Australian media chief James Packer will aim to produce movies in China, local media reported.
President Xi Jinping believes China is losing its moral compass and he wants the ruling Communist Party to be more tolerant of traditional faiths in the hope these will help fill a vacuum created by the country’s breakneck growth and rush to get rich, sources said.
The re-emergence of Quotations from Chairman Mao comes amid an official revival of the era’s rhetoric. Xi Jinping has embraced Maoist terminology and concepts, launching a “mass line rectification campaign” and even presiding over a televised self-criticism session.
In the four years since her husband was arrested, Ms. Zhang, 39, has been transformed from a shy, self-described politically naïve peasant into an eloquent voice for the downtrodden.
